by Tom Gurney
Tom Gurney BSc (Hons) is an art history expert with over 20 years experience
Published on June 19, 2020 / Updated on October 14, 2023
Email: tomgurney1@gmail.com / Phone: +44 7429 011000
Houses in Munich by Wassily Kandinsky: Introduction
A row of tall houses rises behind a broad strip of street. The facades are red, yellow and green; dark roofs cut sharply into an orange sky. Lower down, a small wheeled vehicle moves past the buildings, while figures occupy the green foreground. Kandinsky has not dissolved Munich into abstract shapes here. The buildings, road and people remain recognisable, even as colour begins to carry more of the picture's energy than careful architectural detail. The Von der Heydt Museum lists this work as Häuser in München, or Houses in Munich, dated around 1908. It belongs to that museum in Wuppertal. [1]; [2].
The town named in the title matters. Kandinsky made other pictures of houses in Murnau in 1908, and one is held by the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza. That painting, Murnau: Houses in the Obermarkt, is a separate, larger oil on cardboard with its own documented viewpoint. The two titles can be confused if the word “houses” is read without the place. Here the subject is Munich, and the existing site's near-horizontal image matches the Häuser in München reproduction used by the Von der Heydt and secondary catalogues. [3]; [1].
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Watch on YouTubeAt a Glance
- Artist and date:Wassily Kandinsky, around 1908 in the Von der Heydt Museum's exhibition listing.
- Title:Häuser in München; English Houses in Munich.
- Medium and size:Oil on cardboard, approximately 33 × 41 cm, corroborated by multiple catalogue and reproduction listings.
- Collection:Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal, Germany. A current gallery room is not established here.
- Visible subject:Munich houses and roofs, a road with a wheeled vehicle, and people in the foreground.
- Distinct work:Murnau: Houses in the Obermarkt (1908) belongs to the Carmen Thyssen Collection and has a different size, composition and location.
- Image:Existing site image retained; no clearly licensed new reproduction was adopted.
Where this work sits in Kandinsky’s career
The Blue Rider
1903Composition VII
1913Composition VIII
1923Several Circles
1926Sky Blue
1940Contents
- Houses as planes of colour
- Munich in 1908
- Date, medium and collection evidence
- What the picture establishes
- Frequently asked questions
- References
Houses as planes of colour
The two most prominent facades stand near the left side. The red one is narrower, with a tall dark roof. The yellow one rises beside it and is marked by a ladder of small window openings. Neither building is carefully shaded as a solid block. Flat areas of warm colour and dark edges do much of the describing. Beyond them are smaller, cooler forms: green, blue and muted red structures appear partly covered by the nearer pair. The roofs give the city a recognisable profile, while the varied colour keeps that profile from settling into a neutral record of architecture. [1].
An orange band of sky runs above the buildings. The old page calls it a sunset. That is a plausible visual association, but the picture does not supply a documented hour. It is safer to describe the orange sky and the way it intensifies the red and yellow walls. There are dark accents in the roofs and openings, so warm colour does not make the scene uniformly bright. A patch of black and deep blue behind the front houses creates a visual gap before the buildings at the right. These contrasts make the city appear compressed and lively rather than measured like an elevation drawing. [1].
The street cuts across the picture almost horizontally. A yellow-topped vehicle and darker shapes to its right interrupt that band. The green foreground is a different kind of space: several small people and light shapes sit or bend there, separated from the buildings by the pale roadway. Kandinsky scales them loosely; they invite attention as marks of city life without becoming detailed portraits. The work is still a view of a place, but the viewer may first register a stack of coloured strips—sky, roofs, facades, road and grass—before piecing together the exact street scene. [1].
That layered construction explains why a comparatively small picture can feel crowded. Vertical walls push upward, while road and foreground pull across the width. No single building can be isolated from its neighbours without breaking the rhythm of the whole. The scale of windows, people and vehicle is enough to make them legible, but not enough to turn the work into a topographical diagram. The image can support close visual description. It cannot by itself establish a precise address or name the people in the foreground. [1].
Munich in 1908
Kandinsky had moved from Moscow to Munich in 1896 to study art. After years of travel with Gabriele Münter, he returned to Munich in 1908. The Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza's artist biography explains that he then divided his time between the Bavarian capital and Murnau, the town he and Münter first visited together that summer. This context makes it unsurprising to find distinct 1908 subjects in both places. It does not turn Houses in Munich into a view of Murnau or prove that the two canvases were painted on consecutive days. [4]; [3].
The same biography places Kandinsky's more radical shift toward nonrepresentational painting in the years that followed. Houses in Munich belongs before the Blue Rider group was founded in 1911. Calling it a Blue Rider painting because the museum later showed it in a Blue Rider exhibition would confuse the date of the exhibition with the date of the work. Its urban subject is still identifiable. What distinguishes it from a conventional city view is the strength of the chosen colours and the willingness to abbreviate forms. [4]; [1].
Peter Vergo's account of the separate Murnau Obermarkt painting describes how Kandinsky's 1908 colour could press toward independence from the observed scene. That is a helpful comparison, not a claim that every fact about the Murnau canvas applies to the Munich one. The Munich image likewise uses intense colour, but the exact viewpoint of the Murnau work, its 64.5 × 50.2 cm dimensions and its Carmen Thyssen provenance belong to that object. The two paintings should be compared in how they organise buildings, not merged into one catalogue entry. [3].
Date, medium and collection evidence
The Von der Heydt Museum's exhibition page gives the title Häuser in München and dates it um 1908, meaning around 1908. The inherited page stated “1908” without that small but meaningful qualifier. Three other cataloguing or reproduction sources agree that the original is oil on cardboard, about 33 × 41 cm, at the Von der Heydt Museum in Wuppertal. The owner's approximate date is kept explicit, while medium and size are presented as corroborated catalogue information. [1]; [5]; [6]; [7].
Oil on cardboard is consistent with a small, direct city study, but the support alone cannot prove that Kandinsky painted this picture in one outdoor sitting. The old page described a particular sequence of blocking in large colours and touching them up. There is no object-specific technical report in the cited sources to verify such a sequence. It is enough to observe large colour areas, dark outlines and small patches of variation within the image. Those are visible results, not a reconstructed studio diary. [5]; [1].
The work remains associated with the Von der Heydt Museum. That collection location should not be made into a promise that the painting is currently hanging in a particular room. Its exhibition listing supplies a reliable institutional link for the title and approximate date, and its digital collection has a separate object URL. Visitors can check the museum's current programme before a trip. The existing image on this page is sufficient to guide looking. A slightly larger Commons file lacks a clean, independent photographic source trail and offers only a modest increase in pixels, so no upgrade was adopted for the page or planned guide. [1]; [2].
What the picture establishes
The most productive way to look is to alternate between subject and arrangement. Name the houses, road, vehicle and foreground figures, then look again at the red and yellow columns, orange band, blue-green gaps and dark horizontal cut of the street. This keeps colour grounded in the actual canvas without claiming that it encodes a specific sound or emotion. The earlier page's broad statements about Kandinsky and music belong to a wider discussion of his career; they do not explain this picture's exact blocks of colour. [1]; [4].
The painting marks a point at which a real city is still available to the eye but no longer dictates every colour or edge. Its houses are sturdy enough to structure the scene, while their saturated surfaces make the street feel newly invented. The value of Houses in Munich is not that it already is an abstract Kandinsky. It shows how much he could alter a familiar urban view and still leave its people, buildings and street in place. [1].
Kandinsky artworks directory
Frequently Asked Questions
The Von der Heydt Museum lists Häuser in München as made around 1908. The qualifier is retained because that is how the institution presents its date. [1].
It is associated with the Von der Heydt Museum in Wuppertal, Germany. The cited sources do not establish a current gallery room. [1]; [2].
The sky is orange, which can suggest evening light. The available object sources do not document a precise hour, so “sunset” remains an interpretation rather than an established title or fact. [1].
No. Houses in Munich is the Von der Heydt work. Murnau: Houses in the Obermarkt is a separate 1908 painting in the Carmen Thyssen Collection, with a documented Murnau street viewpoint and larger dimensions. [1]; [3].
Discussion
What do you notice first in Houses in Munich? Share a close observation or a question about the evidence for this work.
Comments are for comparing what we see and what the cited sources establish.
Reader Insights
Which building first catches your eye, and how does its colour affect its neighbours?
What changes when you compare this Munich street with Kandinsky’s separate Murnau Obermarkt painting?
What evidence would be needed to identify this precise Munich viewpoint?
Join the Conversation
Add your observation below and tell us which part of the artwork led you to it.
References
- Von der Heydt Museum, Brücke und Blauer Reiter exhibition listing of Häuser in München. View source.
- Von der Heydt Museum, digital collection object URL for Häuser in München. View source.
- Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Peter Vergo on Murnau: Houses in the Obermarkt. View source.
- Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Wassily Kandinsky artist biography. View source.
- Wassily Kandinsky catalogue listing for Houses in Munich. View source.
- ars mundi original-object caption. View source.
- Reisser art postcard listing with original dimensions. View source.
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